Thank you to Patrick Hutton of Edinburgh for emailing me within a
couple of days of this photo being added to the site. Patrick wrote:

1939-45?

"I think the photo is wartime (1939-45), or
immediately post-war.

I have an idea that the LNER shortened the
lettering on wagons and locos to NE around this time (as an economy
measure?!) If so, the station itself would be closed to passengers by
then. I presume it was still used as a goods office.

The station is on the pier, the photographer
is about where the yacht club is now. The building in the haze in the
distance still stands, I think, albeit very derelict."

[Patrick Hutton: November 8, 2004]

Answer - 2

Thank you to Walter Hume for the comments and recollections below:

pre-1930?

"Granton
Station, appears much too tidy to have been after 1930.

We as a family often had a day out to Burntisland
beach, walking from Newhaven to Granton then a ferry trip on the old
William Muir. Tickets were obtained from the station which in the
mid to late thirties was much more run down than the photograph indicates.

The
actual station entrance was through a large gate in the high wall seen
behind the platform, the Lighthouse Pier which was used by the 'Pharos'
was at the southern end of the platform.

Although
not easy to see in the photo the old steam crane can be picked out, this
was used, along with two others on the West Pier, to load bunker coal on
the large number of steam trawlers then operating from the port.

The
building immediately beyond had a weighbridge. Coal wagons were
moved through an arch using a wire and electric capstan. A before
and after weight kept the record of coal loaded. The big crane in
question was removed soon after the conveyor was built at the end of the
middle pier – pre war, circa 1938."

[Walter Hume, Isle of Wight, England: February
3, 2005]

Answer - 3

Thank you to Douglas Beath, Tasmania, for the comments below:

1923-25?or 1926-40?

"I've just found the Granton Station
photo. The L.M.S. wagon proves it was at earliest 1923, and yes,
the good condition and tidiness suggest pre-closure in 1925.

However the absence of platform lighting
and seating support the post-closure idea and the building's
continued use by staff. It would certainly be pre-1940.

I remember it only as derelict, and the
name board would have been removed with the threat of enemy
landings. In the late 1940s(?) it burned down.

Coal Wagons

The N.E. wagons could be from the
coal-dominated North Eastern Railway, a pre-1923 constituent of the
L.N.E.R., but Mr Hutton's (L) N E (R) suggestion also appeals.

A coal wagon's diagonal line indicated
that it had an end-tipping door. The steam ship-loading
crane (visible by tilting my laptop screen) was astride a rail
track and lifted a ground-level deck with rails carrying the laden
wagon; slewed, and tilted the whole thing to discharge the coal.
I feel sure it was there until after the war.

The other ship-loader at the northwest
tip of Middle Pier was more efficient and more interesting. A rake
of weighed wagons was indexed along by a between-rails winch pawl
pushing on the wagon's axle.

Uncoupled, it rolled onto a turntable
which rotated about 45 degrees then hinged up to discharge the coal
into a below-ground hopper from where a belt conveyor continuously
carried it up and out over the ship, to be dropped down two hanging
chutes into the bunkers.

The wagon turntable was re-lowered,
rotated back into line, then tipped a little to nudge the wagon
northward. It rolled down through a long dip in the track and its
momentum carried it up the opposite slope.

Then it rolled back southward and spring
points in the dip diverted it onto the outbound track where another
winching pawl caught it and pushed it and preceding empties forward
together ready for re-coupling and departure."

Tasmania

Watching all this with boyish mechanical
interest, little did I guess that thirty years later I would be
engineer of a private railway and ship-loader in faraway Tasmania!

Douglas Beath, Tasmania: February 1, 2006

Further Comments

continued

Please click on the map below to see the position of the station on
Middle Pier in 1870 (near the top of the map):

Please click on the picture below to see a view in 2002, looking north
along Middle Pier from beside the slipway at the Royal Forth Yacht Club on
Middle Pier. This is about where the far end of the platform would
have stood.

There is now no longer any evidence of the station, but some of the old
railway track leading north from the station towards the derelict buildings can
still be found. No doubt it will soon be lifted as part of the Edinburgh
Waterfront development.

The old railway track is not apparent in the photograph above, but it can be
clearly seen in this photo: